38. Seton, Robeson, pp. 50–52; The New York Times, Nov. 18, 1928 (PR visit to Commons), Oct. 24, 1929 (Hughes), Nov. 17, 1929 (other cases of discrimination; hotel reactions); Knoblock to PR, Oct. 22, 1929, RA. In Feb. 1929 the Robesons had been guests of the National Labour Club, Ltd., of which the Rt. Hon. J. Ramsay MacDonald was president (Fred O. Roberts to PR, Feb. 19, 1929, RA). The Robesons’ solicitor, Philip Cox, personally conducted an inquiry at the Savoy and reported to the Robesons that the manager of the Grill Room “denies having spoken to you at all and he says that so far as he is aware no one referred to a colour bar or to any restrictions whatsoever!” (Cox to PR, Nov. 8, 1929, RA.)
39. Contender, Oct. 28, 1929; New Leader, Oct. 25, 1929.
40. PR Diary, Nov. 8, 1929, RA.
41. PR Diary, Nov. 9, 10, 1929, RA. Among the unfavorable critical responses to his Nov. 5 Carnegie Hall concert, Pitts Sanborn (New York Telegram, Nov. 6, 1929) found “excessive reserve” in PR’s performance and suspected “there has been some unhappy tinkering with a naturally easy tone production”; Noel Straus (New York Evening World, Nov. 6, 1929) thought PR showed “a decided loss of bloom and power” and also denigrated the program as “too little differentiated in treatment”; Samuel Chotzinoff (New York World, Nov. 6, 1929), perhaps the most scholarly of the critics, based his objections on technical matters, on PR’s inability to vary his “tone color and musical artifice.” The far more favorable reception of the second (Nov. 10) Carnegie concert was exemplified by The New Yorker’s review (Nov. 16, 1929)—though The New Yorker’s critic sounded a cautionary note that was frequently heard: “… it is a pity for an artist of Mr. Robeson’s gifts and intelligence to appear only as an intoner of racial airs.” Among the few unfamiliar songs Robeson added to his repertoire was “Exhortation” by the black composer Will Marion Cook—but of all the numbers on the program, that one fared the worst with the critics; “… it has a hollow and artificial ring” was one representative comment (Detroit Evening Times, Dec. 7, 1929). “Exhortation” was again excoriated—this time by English critics—when Robeson performed it on his 1930 tour of the British Isles (Birmingham Post, March 9, 1930; Yorkshire Post, March 15, 1930).
42. Pittsburgh Courier, Dec. 7, 1929; Chicago Herald and Examiner, Dec. 10, 1929; Rutgers concert program with ER’s handwritten comments (“college yell”); Toronto Musical Courier, Dec. 7, 1929.
43. Evening News (London), July 19, 1928.
44. PR Diary, Nov. 10, 12, 1929, RA. ER to CVV and FM, Dec. 6, 12, 26, 1929, Yale: Van Vechten. Among the highlights of the two months in the States were a reunion with many of the Provincetowners at a kind of vaudeville show (in which PR participated) to raise money to sustain their recent move to the Garrick Theatre (“Fitzi” to PR, Nov. 21,1929, RA; Arthur L. Cams to Otto Kahn, Nov. 25, 1929, PU: Kahn), and a midnight buffet supper at the Otto Kahns’ at which the guests danced till daybreak (Seattle Times, Dec. 14, 1929, report of the party).
CHAPTER 8 Othello (1930–1931)
1. “R.L.” to PR, Feb. 22, 1930, RA; Musical Courier, April 5, 1930 (Paris); interview with PR, Radio Times, April 18, 1930 (agreement about orchestra).
2. Manchester Guardian, March 17; Glasgow Herald, Feb. 18; Daily Express, March 11, 1930. Other papers registering complaints included the Eastbourne Gazette, July 24; The Times, Feb. 14; the Daily Telegraph, Feb. 17; the Bristol Evening Times, Feb. 26, all 1929; and the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, March 15, 1930. The single most scathing (and prestigious) negative came from Ernest Newman, who wrote in the Sunday Times (May 5, 1929) that the spirituals “mostly bore me almost to tears,” insisting their current vogue could be explained by “causes external to music qua music—a sentimental background of emotion derived from our nineteenth century religiosity, dim childhood memories of Uncle Tom and Topsy,” etc.—and took Robeson to task for exercising his gifts on such “wretched material.”
3. Interview with PR, Radio Times, April 18, 1930 (Slavs); ER Diary, Jan. 18, 21, 24, 1930, RA. Paul Bechert reported in the Musical Courier (March 15, 1930) that Robeson’s return to Vienna had been “a feast for all,” and that Robeson was given “a royal welcome.”
4. Musical Standard, March 22, 1930 (Polish musician); Glasgow Citizen, March 3, 1930 (Scottish); Observer, Feb. 16, 1930 (Dahomey; trip to Africa); Edinburgh Evening Dispatch, March 8, 1930 (talkie). While in Edinburgh, the Robesons saw Joe Washington, a young black from Brooklyn Paul knew, who was studying medicine at Edinburgh University (ER Diary, March 9, 1930, RA; also, Washington to PR, Jr., Jan. 26, 1976, RA).
5. By far the fullest account of the history and impact of Borderline is Anne Friedberg’s Ph.D. thesis, “Writing About Cinema: Close Up, 1927–1933,” New York University, Oct. 1983. Thomas Cripps, Slow Fade to Black (Oxford University Press, 1977), has also been useful, as was my interview with the film historian Jay Leyda on May 26, 1985.
6. Friedberg, “Writing About Cinema”; Cripps, Slow Fade; R. H. (Robert Herring, one of the core group of Close-Up-Pool writers), “Filming with Paul Robeson,” Manchester Guardian, May 22, 1930.
7. Kenneth Macpherson to ER, Dec. 26, 1929 (scenario), Feb. 12, 1930 (acting); Macpherson to ER, March 16, 1930 (“not sustained”), RA.
8. ER Diary, March 20–29, 1930, RA. H. D.’s biographer, Barbara Guest, has identified as Robeson the character Saul Howard in “Two Americans,” a story H. D. wrote in 1930: “His least movement was so gracious, he didn’t have to think things out. Nevertheless with an astonishing analytical power, he did think.… He had a mind, a steadfast sort of burning, a thing that glowed like a whole red sunset or like a coal mine, it was steady, a steady sort of warmth and heat, yet all the time intellectual; he thought not as a man thinks. Paula Howard, his wife, thought more as white folks, consistently, being more than half white” (Barbara Guest, Herself Defined: The Poet H. D. and Her World [Doubleday, 1984], pp. 198–99).
9. ER to CVV and FM, March 16, 20, 27/8 (Montreux), 29, April 22, 1930, Yale: Van Vechten; Bryher to ER, May 26, 1930, RA. Gavin Arthur seems to have stood outside the general friendliness; Bryher thought him “rather lost and silly,” though “nice under all” (KM to PR and ER, n.d. [April/May 1930], RA). Herring, “Filming with Paul Robeson” (honey bees, etc.); Bryher, The Heart to Artemis (Harcourt, Brace, 1962), pp. 250, 262. The good feeling all around is exemplified in the subsequent letters they sent each other. “We missed you so much,” Bryher wrote Essie, and Macpherson wrote Paul, “… thanks for the great week, about which we still grow maudlin on the set, putting on Robeson discs, and pretending it’s him in person at the piano!” (Bryher to ER, April 7, 1930; Macpherson to PR, n.d. [April 1930], RA.) H. D. wrote Essie (n.d., RA), “We talk of you still just as if you left yesterday.”
10. In my own viewing of the film, I was struck by Essie’s strength and assuredness—and by her powerful gaze. Ultimately Bryher gave the acting palm in the film to Blanche Lewin, “a retiring gentlewoman from the British colony whom we called Mouse,” who in her opinion stole the show (Bryher, The Heart to Artemis, p. 262).
11. ER to A’Lelia Walker, April 8, 1930, courtesy of A’Lelia P. Bundles; ER to Eugene F. Saxton, n.d., RA (“Russian-German”); Bryher, The Heart to Artemis, p. 250 (Joyless Street); Bryher to ER, May 26, July 1 (“very enthusiastic”), 23 (“exhibition positives”), Aug. 31, 1930, RA; Macpherson to PR and ER, Aug. 9, 1930 (talkie), RA; ER to CVV and FM, Aug. 3, 1930, Yale: Van Vechten; H. D. to ER, May (?) 1930 (“art”), RA. Initially Macpherson had planned to have a private showing of the completed film for press and friends, and Bryher wrote to Essie “wondering whether it would be possible—without involving great expense—to get a small Negro orchestra for the one performance?” (May 2, 1930, RA.)
12. H. D. to ER, Feb. 10, 1931, RA; Evening Standard, Oct. 20, 1930; Bioscope, Oct. 25, 1930.
13. ER to Light, Feb. 18, 1930; Light to ER, two undated letters (Feb.-March 1930), RA; The New York Times, May 25, 1930 (Trask); ER to CVV and FM, March 25, April 22, 1930, Yale: Van Vechten. I am grateful to
Christine Naumann of the Paul-Robeson-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, East Berlin, who during my research trip to the GDR sat with me to summarize and translate the 1930 Berlin reviews of Jones; the specific citations quoted from the Berlin critics come from Neue Berliner Zeitung, April 1, 1930, and Berliner Volkszeitung, March 31, 1930. O’Neill wrote Essie, “Jimmy told me Paul knocked them dead! I am tickled to death. I knew darn well he would” (O’Neill to ER, April 10, 1930, RA). Dr. Robert Klein, head of the Kuenstler Theater, gave a luncheon for the Robesons which the playwright Ferenc Molnár and his actress wife, Lili Darvas, attended; Molnár failed to pass Essie’s critical muster—“he’s an ass,” she wrote in her diary (April 1, 1930, RA), “conceited, abnormal, vulgar, a glutton,” though she found Darvas “lovely-looking, very distinguished, aristocratic, intelligent.”
14. ER to A’Lelia Walker, April 8, 1930, courtesy of A’Lelia P. Bundles: (Wooding); Daily Express, June 4, 1930 (“colour bar”); New York Herald Tribune, June 15, 1930 (gateway). The Daily Herald (Nov. 23, 1923) carried a shortened version of the Daily Gleaner interview (Oct. 31, 1932) headlined “Paul Robeson Looks for a Negro Mussolini.”
15. New York American (May 12, 1927) is among the newspapers that reported on PR’s ORT concert; the Jewish Tribune (July 22, 1927) is among the papers that printed a statement by PR linking the spirituals with Old Testament inspiration. Passing through Poland on their 1930 trip, the Robesons met an Austrian Jew who was a Rumanian subject; while serving for two years in the Rumanian Army, he told them, “they made him a servant, beat and kicked him, and … they are really terrible to the Jews.… Poor fellow” (ER Diary, Jan. 22, 1930, RA). For the plight of the Welsh miners, see Arthur Horner, Incorrigible Rebel (Macgibbon & Kee, 1960), pp. 103ff.
16. PR to Browne, Oct. 6, 1928, UM: Browne/Van Volkenburg (“afraid”); Browne, “My Production of Othello,” Everyman, May 15, 1930; Maurice Browne, Too Late to Lament (Gollancz, 1955), p. 323 (itched); Daily Express, May 21, 1930. Hannen Swaffer, the influential Daily Express columnist, who knew Robeson personally, offered an intriguing anecdote about the reaction Paul and Essie had to Jew Süss:
“Paul Robeson and his wife had one of their little arguments.
“The only thing I found them disagreeing about, hitherto, was Marcus Garvey, the Negro spell-binder, who was in London not long ago. Paul believes in him. His wife does not.
“It was when they saw Jew Süss,’ however, that the other argument began. When they came out Mrs. Robeson said, ‘Now, don’t agree with me this time. I hope you do not think what I thought.’
“‘I thought that Peggy Ashcroft ought to play Desdemona,’ said Paul.
“‘That is what I thought,’ said his wife, ‘but I hoped you would not see it.’ That is how Peggy was chosen.”
Outside of this brief mention by Swaffer, there is no other evidence that I have found of PR’s having any interest in Marcus Garvey (see note 36, p. 623). Swaffer, of course, may have gotten it wrong. In her unflattering portrait of him, Ethel Mannin accuses him of being “savagely intolerant” toward blacks and, specifically, “patronising” toward Robeson (Confessions and Impressions, pp. 153–56). Interview with Dame Peggy Ashcroft (PR, Jr., participating), Sept. 9, 1982 (hereafter Ashcroft interview); and a four-page typewritten memoir of the production which Dame Peggy kindly prepared for me, Aug. 1984 (hereafter Ashcroft Memoir).
17. ER Diary, April 15, 16, 1930, RA; ER to Van Volkenburg, n.d. (May 1930), UM: Browne/Van Volkenburg.
18. Ashcroft interview, Sept. 9, 1982; Ashcroft Memoir, Aug. 1984.
19. Ashcroft interview, Sept. 9, 1982; Daily Sketch, May 21, 1930 (kissing); The New York Times, Jan. 16, 1944 (“clumsy”). “This in itself made it more than a theatrical experience, it put the significance of race straight in front of me and I made my choice of where I stood” (Ashcroft Memoir, Aug. 1984).
20. Ashcroft interview, Sept. 9, 1982.
21. Ashcroft interview, Sept. 9, 1982; Ashcroft Memoir, Aug. 1984; ER Diary, May 13, 1930, RA.
22. Daily Telegraph, May 20, 1930 (skirt dance). Time and Tide, May 31, 1930 (spiritual); the “terrific row” was told by PR to Vernon Beste and described in a letter from Beste to Ann Soutter, May 14, 1985, courtesy of PR, Jr.
23. Agate, Sunday Times, May 25, 1930. The reviewer for West Africa (May 24, 1930) took particular exception to Robeson’s costume, pointing out that when he was finally allowed to wear the flowing white Moorish robes in the last scene, he not only looked but also sounded his best; Ashcroft Memoir, Aug. 1984 (Richardson); Ashcroft interview, Sept. 9, 1982 (costume).
24. ER Diary, May 19, 20, 1930, RA; The World (New York), May 21, 1930 (“started off”); Illustrated London News, May 31, 1930 (“little to recommend”); Truth, May 28, 1930 (Browne). Browne and Van Volkenburg were additionally drubbed in the Evening Standard, the Daily Mail, the Manchester Guardian, the Daily Telegraph—all May 20, 1930; The Saturday Review, May 24, 1930; Everyman, May 29, 1930; Time and Tide, May 31, 1930; and Sphere, May 31, 1930. Hannen Swaffer recorded a touching episode in his Variety column (June 4, 1930): “I think Paul performed a very kindly act the other night. He called to see me at my flat to ask me to say that the actor who played Cassio [Max Montesole] had been unfairly criticized by some of the critics, who did not know that his part had been cut on the afternoon of the performance, and that, indeed, he had been going out of his way for days to help Robeson, perhaps to the detriment of his own job.” Swaffer also reported that “One London editor walked out during Othello because there were Negroes around him in the stalls.”
25. Week-End Review, May 24, 1930 (“great”); Daily Mail, May 20, 1930 (“magnificent”); Evening News, May 20, 1930 (“remarkable”); News of the World, May 25, 1930 (“prosaic”); Daily News, May 20, 1930 (“disappointing”); Christian Science Monitor, June 2, 1930 (“losing”); The New Statesman, May 24, 1930 (“kindly”); Reynolds News, May 25, 1930 (“great soldier”); Time and Tide, May 31, 1930 (“inferiority complex”); Country Life, May 31, 1930 (arrogance); The Lady, May 29, 1930 (“affinity”). Also The Taller, June 4, 1930: “the Moor was not an Ethiopian.” Two additional examples of laudatory reviews are the Daily Telegraph, May 20, 1930 (“a fine presence, a beautiful voice”) and The New Yorker, June 21, 1930 (“a great personal triumph for Paul Robeson”). As The New Yorker’s summary comment indicates, the New York press reported capsule versions of the London reviews and, surprisingly, leaned with inaccurate one-sidedness to the positive view of Robeson’s reception (e.g., Herald Tribune, May 21, 1930). Moreover, the American critics who attended the performance praised him more fully than did their English counterparts (e.g., G. W. Bishop, The New York Times, May 20, 1930; Christian Science Monitor, June 2, 1930; Richard Watts, Jr., New York Herald Tribune, May 29, 1930). Pearson’s Weekly, April 5, 1930 (PR’s view of play). It’s possible that Pearson’s misrepresented PR’s views of the play. Either that, or his views soon evolved. In two subsequent statements he sounded less ambivalent. “There are very few Moors in Northern Africa without Ethiopian blood in their veins,” he told The Observer (May 18, 1930), and in a radio broadcast in June entitled “How It Feels for an American Negro to Play ‘Othello’ to an English Audience,” he asserted, “In Shakespeare’s time … there was no great distinction between the Moor and the brown or the black.… Surely most of the Moors have Ethiopian blood and come from Africa, and to Shakespeare’s mind he was called a blackamoor. Further than that, in Shakespeare’s own time and through the Restoration, notably by Garrick, the part was played by a black man” (as reported in the New York Herald Tribune, June 8, 1930).
26. Daily Express, June 4, 1930 (liberating); ER Diary, May 20, 1930, RA; ER to CVV and FM, May 29, 1930, Yale: Van Vechten. CVV to ER, June 22, 1930, RA (“Paul’s performance is still with us”); CVV to Knopf, June 27, 1930, UT: Knopf; CVV to Johnson, June 21, 1930, Yale: Van Vechten. Essie had gotten hold of a pair of opening-night tickets for the Van Vechtens—“All London is trying to buy them”—but they couldn’t get over in time
(ER to CVV and FM, March 25, 1930, Yale: Van Vechten). Du Bois to ER, July 10, 1930, RA.
Roger Quilter congratulated PR on his “great achievement” (Quilter to PR, June 22, 1930, RA). Aldous Huxley wrote that, after seeing his “beautiful and illuminating performance,” he often found himself thinking back on it “with the most profound satisfaction” (Huxley to PR, July 5, 1930, RA). The writer William Plomer was so moved by his “splendid Othello, in spite of the handicap of bad costume and lighting,” that he was “hardly in a fit state” to come backstage (Plomer to PR, May 21, 1930, RA). The explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson was a bit more backhanded in his compliment—“Shakespeare is stilted and hard to believe but you got more out of your part than any actor whom I have seen” (Stefansson to PR, July 6, 1930; RA)—and Bryher was downright truculent: “I see no reason for acting Shakespeare now. Still I forgot these very strong views whenever I was listening to Othello last week and they only emerged into consciousness during the other sections of the play. I hope this is a road to your working in plays linked to modern consciousness.” Bryher also reported in her letter that she had “had a severe shock over Bantu.” She had begun studying the language but had found it “far worse than Chinese.… No wonder Negro Music has evolved such wonderful forms. If you have nine declensions and they are all differentiated by TONES what else is to be expected? I am abandoning sadly all attempts at Bantu” (Bryer to PR, May 26, 1930, RA).
In retrospect at least, Peggy Ashcroft was one of the enthusiasts of Robeson’s performance. Given the fact that he “had to endure great difficulties,” she feels “his performance was indeed very, very memorable” (Ashcroft interview, Sept. 9, 1982). “He was a natural and instinctive actor, with imagination, passion and absolute sincerity, and those factors made up for what he lacked in technique” (Ashcroft Memoir, Aug. 1984).
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